Western European countries have recently witnessed legislative reforms concerning the set of rules governing the co-operative type of organizations (and, in particular, the producer co-operatives). The most innovative aspect introduced by these reforms seems the possibility for the co-operatives...

The aim of this paper is to study the welfare e¤ects of consumer cooperatives in mixed oligopoly markets. We show that under decreasing returns to scale and su¢ ciently high market competition these …rms can contribute more to social welfare when acting on behalf of all consumers rather than...

Consumer cooperatives constitute a highly successful example of democratic forms of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually organized as medium and large-scale ?rms competing with pro?t-maximizing ?rms in retail industries. This paper models such situation as a mixed...

Consumer co-operatives constitute a highly successful example of democratic forms of enterprises operating in developed countries. They are usually organized as medium or large-scale firms competing with profit seeking firms in retail industries. In this paper we model such a situation as a...

The early nineties Western European Cooperation reforms have followed a similar path of innovation. The most innovative change introduced by these reforms is the possibility for the Cooperative firms to comprehend, beside the traditional physical person members (PPlvI's), a certain number of...

The recent globalization of world economies has led the retail markets of developed countries towards increasing levels of integration and strategic interdependence. A non negligible share of retail and food markets is currently served by co-operative societies. Consistently with this trend, the...